In early November 2026, the state of Assam announced the release into the wild of hatchlings of the black softshell turtle (Nilssonia nigricans). The event marked another step in a long-running programme to restore a species that until recently was considered extinct in the wild.
The turtle lives in the Brahmaputra basin and is classified as critically endangered by the IUCN. For many years, small populations survived only in temple ponds, where they were protected by religious traditions. The best known are the pond at the Hayagriva Madhava temple in Hajo and the pond of the Nagshankar temple. There the animals found refuge while poaching and habitat destruction laid waste to the rivers.
Since the mid-2000s, the Assam Forest Department, with the support of partners including the Wildlife Survival Alliance Foundation India, has run a captive-breeding programme. Eggs are collected from temple ponds, incubated under controlled conditions, and the hatchlings are reared until they are large enough to withstand predators. In November 2026, 240 such hatchlings were released into a protected water body in the Biswanath division — part of more than a thousand individuals returned to the wild since 2021.
The programme's success shows how traditional practices and modern methods complement each other. Temple communities served for centuries as informal guardians of the species, while science added artificial incubation and controlled rearing. As a result, the population in the Brahmaputra–Kaziranga landscape has stabilised, although the species remains under threat.
The release of the hatchlings is not merely a symbolic gesture. Every hatchling that survives to adulthood brings closer the moment when natural reproduction can sustain the population without constant human intervention. The monitoring carried out by the forest services will show how effective these efforts are in the long term.
Similar projects in North-East India also cover other riverine species, underscoring the link between the health of the Brahmaputra ecosystem and the well-being of its inhabitants.
The combination of temple protection and scientific breeding offers a real chance to return the species to the rivers where it was once common.
